Concepts of masculinity in 'The Wife's Lament' and its critical literature

The new men’s studies can be seen as a critical interrogation of unitary concepts of masculinity. Particularly gay men have been quick to point out that restrictive notions of what it means to be a man not only affect women in negative ways, but also gay men, who are discriminated against precisely because they do not conform to hegemonic concepts of masculinity. My paper will start from a consideration of the ways in which some critics of the Old English poem The Wife’s Lament have argued against the possibility of a female narrator. I attempt to show that such critical moves, which do not stop short of emending the text in an effort to exclude the female voice, are based on unitary concepts of masculinity that affect both women and men in similar ways.